When last we spoke, Andy and Randy lived together because there were no females for them. No more.
I bought two females at the pet store 30 miles away and put them in a nearby cage so I could let the girls each pick which guy she wanted. At first it seemed they weren't interested in the fellows at all. They were loving the huge cage.
I make my own cages out of half-inch hardware cloth 26" long, 15" deep and 17" high. So far every zebra finch who has come to my house has taken one look and moved in like these cages are mansions. Any bird that needs to go live at Lucille's takes a look at the little transport cage and says no way. I have to catch the bird to shift it. But I digress.
The girls eventually selected their mates. Randy's new mate didn't let him have sex with her for a day or so, then she squealed like a pig the first time they mated. Weird. So we call her Boopsie.
The other girl was such a fidgety nervous little thing that I call her Fidget. These girls are egg-laying machines! They often lay two eggs in one day. I keep filching them as I don't want more finches.
Randy and Boopsie were together, and Andy and Fidget are still together. What's up with Randy and Boopsie? She was with him a few months and seemed happy, then suddenly she was done with him. She did nothing but chase, chase, chase him. So I took her to Lucille's house to see if she wanted one of her males.
She wanted no male at all. Okay, fine. Meanwhile poor Randy became depressed. When I cleaned the cages, his bottom paper would be clean except for a pile of droppings in the back corner where he was sitting on a perch all day long. Randy's the one I call the trapeze artist because when he's with a female he plays with his swing all day long. No swinging happened at all, so I took him to Lucille's house to see if he might chirk up seeing some other finch faces.
I brought Boopsie back where she moved back into a big cage with great joy. And Lucille's Lynn--a finch who enjoys hatching babies behind Lucille's back--thought Randy was a fine figure of a man. Lynn doesn't stay with any mate for very long, so her dumping one in favor of Randy didn't surprise us. I hope she sticks with him longer though. He's had many mates so far in his life what with girls dying on him or dumping him.
So suddenly Del was a bachelor again, so I brought him home and the noise level in my house went way up. In about a week I noticed Boopsie clinging to her cage wall to get close to him. So I offered her the opportunity to move into his cage and she moved in. Now they're a pair.
And Del quit his loud calling. Everybody's happy at the moment. Gotta love that.
The only bird who has no mate right now is at Lucille's. He's Val, one of Lynn's surprise babies all grown up. He's a pied bird who is mostly white but with bits of male color and finch markings here and there, and he seems content alone so far. So far, our pied males have had trouble getting a female finch to accept them, so when he hollers for a mate we'll have to cross our fingers that a new girl will think he's cool.
That's the latest news in our finch version of Peyton Place. Well, that and the society finches hatched one baby and they're actually feeding it! Whee! Whole other story.
